I've not blogged for ages - maybe because I found everything I wanted to say was in some ways increasingly "political" in nature and I don't want this blog to be a political rant. That's what facebook is for! The odd things in life I find these days are so often wrapped up in government policy, or official bureaucracy.
However, a new friend who is a poet has become somewhat of a muse, and so on their prompting I offer the following...
Singing.
An autobiographical poem by Ian Diddams. With thanks to John Miles
Singing was my first love,
And it may be my last,
Singing in the future,
Came from singing in the past...
First was singing at school,
Happy songs and ditties,
And a solo first verse
Of 'Royal David's City
Then to the local choir
To sing along in church
hymns and carols, where on
the edge of a pew I'd perch
Soon the joys of rugby
Enticed me from the choir
With songs of maidens named
Dinah and Delilah
We'd sing of Immobile,
and then "The Sloop John B"
And a Dickie-Die-Doe
My rugby team mates and me
Then a hip replacement
Stopped all the running stuff
Rugby and triathlon
My body had sung "Enough"
My soul cried out for more
My brain would not relent
From finding a way to
Assuage my musical bent
Next up was D.M.T.
And also TiTCo too
Concerts and musicals
Sung, and operas with W.H.O.
Ad-hoc singing as well
Sea shanties down the pub
And those stand up, floor spots
At Seend Acoustic Club
So here I sit today
The score upon my desk
Learning my tenor line
For whichever show comes next.
Singing was my first love,
And it may be my last,
Singing in the future,
Came from singing in the past...
(c) Ian Diddams 2015
Wednesday, 11 November 2015
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
Rotate the Date. Or how 1999 has a lot to answer for.
And so it has come to pass. The annual change in date number has occurred, that ensures that for the next few weeks cheques will be returned undeposited as the year is wrong, and we collectively struggle to overcome the last 46 weeks of cerebral imprinting. 2012 has disappeared before it hardly started, and 2013 has begun. It will be 2014 next week. We are 12% through another century and the Mayans were wrong. Or rather, those that interpreted the failure of the Mayans to perform the next print run of their calendar as definitive proof of the demise of our planet were wrong. The Mayans never said the world was going to end... I suspect they just got a new hobby to indulge in that distracted them from drawing up the next calendar. Like macramé. John Cusack would have been gutted.
30 years ago New Year was the peak of my social year... it was a mandatory night out; an orgy of beer, kisses, hugs and laughter. And there's nothing wrong with that, though sociologists, the temperance brigade and wowsers would all be shaking their heads at such displays of binge drinking undoubtedly. From house parties as a child/young teenager at neighbours houses at "The Willows", to the gathering of the great and the good at the Dyson's ... to Sittingbourne's pubs ... to The Hole in the Wall for the unofficial Aber Uni annual regrouping, each New Year passed in time honoured fashion. Happy Days. Though we were unaware, we were practising for the big one, for 1999, when Tony Blair assured us that a year ending in a zero was not the last year in a decade/century/millennia but in fact the first, even though there wasn't a year zero to begin in way back when they nailed people to trees to punish them and to herald a new calendar system.
A few years passed... the options for Bacchanalian celebration dropped away as life became more rural and responsible with young children. This reached its zenith for 1999/2000 which has some irony possibly given the entire globe was parting like it WAS 1999. Post appendectomy and with the wifelet having given birth recently, 3 children below the age of 5, we watched Blair prove he doesn't understand number systems, raised a solitary glass and went to bed. I'm a mathematician, not a greasy politician. The real millennia a year later passed everyone by. Too boring I suspect. Though I'd like to think somewhere at CERN maybe Professor Brian Cox and his chums were having a huge time of it parting like it was 2000.
And what of now? Urges to party like its 1999 have generally passed by... I usually feel I should make some effort.. but... well, its all a bit of a flap really and the prospect of sharing my evening with a bunch of people hell bent on ensuring THEY have the greatest night EVER since 1999 has lost its appeal. We spent a few years with friends disposing of as much red wine as the euro wine lakes would permit, and most recently a couple of dinner parties - gosh how middle class am _I_ now? And one year a rite of passage with one son telling his mum how much he loved her whilst his brother lifted his dad out of a hedge into which he had stumbled. Twice. Names omitted to protect the over indulged.
And last night...? In the last year I have watched a young girl becoming a young woman. And two teenage boys become fine young men. Not to forget a wonderful woman become an outstanding Occupational Therapist. Right at the end of the year a very clever bloke swapped out a troublesome femur ball joint for a titanium spike and a ceramic ball joint for me. So 31/12/2012 was spent with three children elsewhere and Tracey and I watching drivel TV. One of my fine young men came home early, bored with his party. So as Big Ben struck midnight, Tracey, George and I were heading to Marlborough to collect Joby, as Charlotte was at my mum's. It was as the German's would have it "gemütlich". Sehr gemütlich. God you get sad when you reach 50.
Incidentally... someone needs to tell the DJ on Radio Somerset that it is not new year until Big Ben has completed the intro and sounded the first BONG. Not when it starts to whir into motion, accompanied by "That's it! It's 2013". Twit.
Good job it wasn't 1999. (c) Ian Diddams 2013
Saturday, 20 October 2012
Top of the Class
When I wur a lad, 40 year ago, in t’ north of t’Kent (where
we didn’t speak like that) “class” was a concept that was often bandied arahnd
and abaht (which is far more like wot we used ter speak like). Upper class
people owned Sevenoaks, Middle Class people owned shops or were accountants,
while most of the rest of us were working class. Then there was the Isle of
Sheppey. I won’t quite say we all knew our place and were glad of it, because
the 60s had already started to alter society’s perceptions of the class
structure in the UK
(or at least England.
Goodness knows what they thought in West Lothian). But
it was still the general case and it existed.
But as the years moved along, and Thatcher in particular did
her best to disrupt the norms that had kept English society in place since
feudal times, all those lines get very, very smudged. Home ownership was no
longer the preserve of the middle class – the upper class owned OTHER people’s
homes of course anyway – as every Tom, Dick or Harry bought their council house
and Wimpey gave up cooking burgers and instead built multiple estates of
identikit Cornflake boxes to sell to the empowered working classes. A last
bastion of middle class preserve was removed almost in one fell swoop. Ironic,
then, that names such as “Tom, “Dick” or “Harry” (in particular!) should become
very much “middle class” names today…
The grocer’s daughter moved aside for the music hall
performer’s son who continued the path of turning sons of the sod into property
owning tycoons. The City’s Big bang blew open the ingrained old boy network
that was “The City” and wide boys from far and … well… wide streamed in to fill
their Gucci and BMW 3 series’ boots with lots of luvverly moolah. Not to
mention multiply boost the sales of red braces overnight.
Then came Blair. And any pretences that some may have held
to the old class structure disappeared totally. Fifty per cent of the
population were to gain degrees; if ever there was a middle class preserve this
was it. It soon became apparent though that there was a reason why 50% of the
population didn’t go to university – because they weren’t clever enough! And
still weren’t clever enough to study Law, or 19th century French
Literature, or Chemistry – so “Lady Gaa-Gaa Studies” at Louth University (née
Louth College of Art and Humanities), burgeoning opportunities in “Health and
Sports Recreation” at Loughborough University (which had always been a
university of course and always offered sport related studies, but was now
actually heard of outside of Leicestershire) and multiple Media Studies courses
sprung up to take the influx of 18 year olds that couldn’t get a job, couldn’t
get the dole so had to go to uni instead.
And so the old fashioned class structure died. And a good
thing too we may feel. Except… this last month we have been reminded by the
popular meejah that the class structure does exist still in the UK
in the 21st century. Or it does if you are talking about Tory
members of parliament. With Andrew Mitchell and Plebgate, and now George
Osbourne and “1st Class train ticket gate” (doesn’t quite roll off
the tongue that one) it appears that the upper classes still rule over us – but
now embarrassingly so. But aside from Conservative party members making pubic
misdemeanours – and let’s face it that is hardly news anyway, from Profumo to
Parkinson – where DOES the class structure in the UK
stand in 2012? There are the historically rich, bemoaning the costs of living
in houses the size of Daventree. There are the nouveau middle classes bemoaning
the lack of decent schooling in Wessex
having reached financial nirvana through Wayne
having landed a big one in Dubai in
the mid 1990s. And there are the working classes… much of whom arguably are no
longer actually working but – if you believe the Daily Wail – living off the
benefit state. So these are hardly representative of the historical meanings of
the class system so what has replaced it?
Today the system seems to have moved its boundaries from a
horizontal plane to a vertical one and the old distinctions seem redundant. “Anyone”
can own a house – and “Anyone” can become homeless. “Anyone” can run their own
business and “Anyone” can be out of work totally. “Anyone” can find riches
galore and “Anyone” can lose them.We seem now to have a situation of old money, new money and
no money. Allied to social pretensions…
of Celebrity, Snobbery and horror at what we have become.
Maybe to put it another way, what we have in 2012 is …
The Chavs and The Chav-nots?
(c) Ian Diddams 2012
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
Coffee, Cheese, Thrift and Retro...
Devizes is a fantastic town. Great architecture, friendly people. And unlike many of its neighbours, it managed to avoid the 1970s and 1980s pretty much with regard to its town centre, so it isn't just "high street anywhere"with rows of franchises and chains and nothing else. It enjoys many independent stores and services run by the genuinely self employed.
As I stroll around the town centre things are a little .. odd. I suspect these are not solely the preserve of Devizes in 2012 and that these trends are replicated throughout the land, but nonetheless a quick thought as to the demographics of businesses in town throws up some interesting figures.
It has many pubs still, as befits a brewery town. That includes a Wetherspoons, which is one of the franchises in town, but we don;t have a Moon and Slug, Or Carrot and Harvest, or any such chain style pubs. It has a Subway, mercifully located way away from the centre and a Greggs, but also has several owner-run sandwich shops as well. We almost have the full range of supermarkets, just "missing" Asda, though there is one you could build a 747 in just a few miles away in Melksham if you need to slap your back pocket. Two independent butchers of excellent quality.
But... when you start to count things up... there are 7 Coffee Shops within a 50 metre radius. Two of them are franchises, possibly three but I don't drink enough £2.75 a cup coffee to know to be honest. And this number doesn't include other outlets where coffee is also available - a chain bakers serves coffee out the back, there are a couple of cafes, Morrisons has a cafe (if that doesn't break the Trades Description's Act) and Wetherspoons sells coffee. But places that say "coffee shop" number seven. In a small area.
Then there are also three delicatessens in a smaller radius - all of which incidentally also sell coffee though one of them somehow doesn't fit the coffee shop nomenclature - personally. Go figure.
And of course the thrift/charity shops which are burgeoning. Goodness alone knows how many of them there are but my wife would as she is the charity shop queen - great deals constantly at bargain basement prices., kitting herself out for a fraction of buying new clothes, and when they were younger our children. Many of the clothes having hardly been worn - if ever. As for me I get the occasional item of clothing from them too of course.
And finally yet more shabby chic type and "domestic antiques" shops... half a dozen of them, full of tastefully renovated (or distraught!) furniture and twiddly bits. Stuff that your grandad threw away and are now worth £45. Bet you never knew you needed a enamel bread bin with a big rust hole in it to have the postman deliver to instead of a letter box did you? Mind you, the kitchen tables are at least a decent size and don't look as if they will fall apart after 18 months. And are only 50% more anyway.
We live in what we are told are tough times - not that the cuts have started and there is a lot of pain to come. people. generally people haven't; a clue as to what needs to happen. But even so, prices go up, salaries and wages don't - and yet people can spend enough on drinking coffee and eating Venezuelan Beaver Cheese (with thanks to Monty Python) before going home to sit on their distressed sofa to gaze at their Edwardian fireguard to keep fourteen or so businesses going
Maybe its because they are buying their clothes at the charity shops and saving money that way? (c) Ian Diddams 2012
As I stroll around the town centre things are a little .. odd. I suspect these are not solely the preserve of Devizes in 2012 and that these trends are replicated throughout the land, but nonetheless a quick thought as to the demographics of businesses in town throws up some interesting figures.
It has many pubs still, as befits a brewery town. That includes a Wetherspoons, which is one of the franchises in town, but we don;t have a Moon and Slug, Or Carrot and Harvest, or any such chain style pubs. It has a Subway, mercifully located way away from the centre and a Greggs, but also has several owner-run sandwich shops as well. We almost have the full range of supermarkets, just "missing" Asda, though there is one you could build a 747 in just a few miles away in Melksham if you need to slap your back pocket. Two independent butchers of excellent quality.
But... when you start to count things up... there are 7 Coffee Shops within a 50 metre radius. Two of them are franchises, possibly three but I don't drink enough £2.75 a cup coffee to know to be honest. And this number doesn't include other outlets where coffee is also available - a chain bakers serves coffee out the back, there are a couple of cafes, Morrisons has a cafe (if that doesn't break the Trades Description's Act) and Wetherspoons sells coffee. But places that say "coffee shop" number seven. In a small area.
Then there are also three delicatessens in a smaller radius - all of which incidentally also sell coffee though one of them somehow doesn't fit the coffee shop nomenclature - personally. Go figure.
And of course the thrift/charity shops which are burgeoning. Goodness alone knows how many of them there are but my wife would as she is the charity shop queen - great deals constantly at bargain basement prices., kitting herself out for a fraction of buying new clothes, and when they were younger our children. Many of the clothes having hardly been worn - if ever. As for me I get the occasional item of clothing from them too of course.
And finally yet more shabby chic type and "domestic antiques" shops... half a dozen of them, full of tastefully renovated (or distraught!) furniture and twiddly bits. Stuff that your grandad threw away and are now worth £45. Bet you never knew you needed a enamel bread bin with a big rust hole in it to have the postman deliver to instead of a letter box did you? Mind you, the kitchen tables are at least a decent size and don't look as if they will fall apart after 18 months. And are only 50% more anyway.
We live in what we are told are tough times - not that the cuts have started and there is a lot of pain to come. people. generally people haven't; a clue as to what needs to happen. But even so, prices go up, salaries and wages don't - and yet people can spend enough on drinking coffee and eating Venezuelan Beaver Cheese (with thanks to Monty Python) before going home to sit on their distressed sofa to gaze at their Edwardian fireguard to keep fourteen or so businesses going
Maybe its because they are buying their clothes at the charity shops and saving money that way? (c) Ian Diddams 2012
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
"HSBC isn't working", or "Banking Breaking Point".
HSBC bank. What a waste of space. I have merely to pay three cheques into two accounts.
I arrive. Upstairs, the queue for proper person to person pay-ins is looking like Nigel Farage's immigration poster, or Thatcher's "Labour isn't working" poster back in the 1970s. I harbour a sneaking suspicion some of the people at the front of the queue are the remnants of Thatcher's queue that was redirected to this bank teller's position without that knowledge. Or maybe even the last vestiges of the Jarrow march that similarly and unknowingly got redirected to Devizes.
So I venture back downstairs where the automated pay-in machines reside. The pathetically inadequate "self serve pay-in" machine won't take the pay-ins. I try several times with the various pieces of paper in different orders and ways up etc. It's still not taking them. It hates me. I can tell. It mocks me with its insistent beeping noise and teases me by asking for my bank card for the bank account details. Then spits it all out and laughingly refers me to a member of staff to assist me. Except there are no members of staff downstairs, where "Radio HSBC Braindead" is playing just-oh-so-slightly-too-loud with its cheery banterous and jocular invitations to take out vast swathes of credit interspersed with the sort of musical tracks that not even Radio SadTwats won't play.
No doubt the members of staff that are not available to assist are on their lunch break. Which is fair enough. Except that it is clearly beyond the wit of HSBC to realise that the busiest time of the day is likely to be when everybody else is at lunch and needing some reasonable expeditious service. My how I chortled to myself at this oversight.
I return upstairs, defeated by my nemesis of self service automated machines. Upstairs has only two tellers. Because of course HSBC only has two teller positions. They don't need any more of course because the automated self service machines downstairs means nobody needs real life tellers really. I sigh.
The "real world and people" tellers i.e. actual human beings, have a queue six people long now. Thatcher has put the rest to work, or Farage has put them onto an overcrowded boat and sent them out to sea. And the Jarrovians have just withered and died and are but dust on the breeze of the just-too-cold air-conditioning.
Eventually I get to the front. There's a guy on the left taking out his life savings and needing to supply a thousand security proofs to do so. And a woman on the right on holiday that is insisting on telling the teller her life history and holiday plans. Eventually the woman on the right has finished with her great-aunt's lumbago story. She is finished. Well, she takes a breath which is all the teller needs to interject. But then the interjecting teller starts to give holiday woman a sales spiel about an advanced account that holiday woman could transfer to. This takes a few minutes. Holiday woman acquiesces and is directed to wait in a nearby chair for someone to attend her. Holiday woman moves away and the teller's window is available. At last.
I step to the window. "Sorry Sir, I have to attend to something for a few minutes. Please wait."
My life flashes before me. will I ever see my wife and children again? Will I end up on some politician's banner one day making a heavy and unsubtle point? I step back to the queue. The head of which is now held by a woman with a walker. She has to then awkwardly reverse with said walker so I can "stay behind the line". Its an unedifying position and the entire rest of the queue jostles backwards, including travel-agent-chat man who is loudly talking on his mobile phone to somebody who is in a travel agents. Its marginally worse than listening to "Radio HSBC Braindead".
I wait. Eons pass. Life savings man has now got to answer a question about his great-grandfather's dog's favourite walk. I wonder if he will actually pass away before getting his mitts on his savings. Or he will fail at the final hurdle because his DNA doesnt; match an alleged ancestor for the times of the Dark Ages.
I wait some more. A lot more.
Eventually life savings man has passed the Spanish inquisition and walks off with a cheap plastic shopping bag stuffed with notes. He wouldn't last 30 seconds in Streatham. Good job this isn't Streatham.
I step forward. "How can I help you" asks the other teller
I count to ten. I briefly and curtly request to pay the cheques in. She inquires about the automated pay-in machines; she catches my less than delighted visage. She quietens and processes the cheques and paying in slips. The paying in process takes less than a minute.
I have reached nirvana.
Now I am finally completed, outside the seasons have changed and my children are now adults. There's a new monarch on the throne and Brexit has still not completed. I notice a political poster in the wall of the new building that has somehow sprung up since I entered the bank. "Bojo's Dry Cleaning". The poster has a long, winding queue of people in it. I am sure I can see myself somewhere towards the back.
(c) Ian Diddams 2017
I arrive. Upstairs, the queue for proper person to person pay-ins is looking like Nigel Farage's immigration poster, or Thatcher's "Labour isn't working" poster back in the 1970s. I harbour a sneaking suspicion some of the people at the front of the queue are the remnants of Thatcher's queue that was redirected to this bank teller's position without that knowledge. Or maybe even the last vestiges of the Jarrow march that similarly and unknowingly got redirected to Devizes.
So I venture back downstairs where the automated pay-in machines reside. The pathetically inadequate "self serve pay-in" machine won't take the pay-ins. I try several times with the various pieces of paper in different orders and ways up etc. It's still not taking them. It hates me. I can tell. It mocks me with its insistent beeping noise and teases me by asking for my bank card for the bank account details. Then spits it all out and laughingly refers me to a member of staff to assist me. Except there are no members of staff downstairs, where "Radio HSBC Braindead" is playing just-oh-so-slightly-too-loud with its cheery banterous and jocular invitations to take out vast swathes of credit interspersed with the sort of musical tracks that not even Radio SadTwats won't play.
No doubt the members of staff that are not available to assist are on their lunch break. Which is fair enough. Except that it is clearly beyond the wit of HSBC to realise that the busiest time of the day is likely to be when everybody else is at lunch and needing some reasonable expeditious service. My how I chortled to myself at this oversight.
I return upstairs, defeated by my nemesis of self service automated machines. Upstairs has only two tellers. Because of course HSBC only has two teller positions. They don't need any more of course because the automated self service machines downstairs means nobody needs real life tellers really. I sigh.
The "real world and people" tellers i.e. actual human beings, have a queue six people long now. Thatcher has put the rest to work, or Farage has put them onto an overcrowded boat and sent them out to sea. And the Jarrovians have just withered and died and are but dust on the breeze of the just-too-cold air-conditioning.
Eventually I get to the front. There's a guy on the left taking out his life savings and needing to supply a thousand security proofs to do so. And a woman on the right on holiday that is insisting on telling the teller her life history and holiday plans. Eventually the woman on the right has finished with her great-aunt's lumbago story. She is finished. Well, she takes a breath which is all the teller needs to interject. But then the interjecting teller starts to give holiday woman a sales spiel about an advanced account that holiday woman could transfer to. This takes a few minutes. Holiday woman acquiesces and is directed to wait in a nearby chair for someone to attend her. Holiday woman moves away and the teller's window is available. At last.
I step to the window. "Sorry Sir, I have to attend to something for a few minutes. Please wait."
My life flashes before me. will I ever see my wife and children again? Will I end up on some politician's banner one day making a heavy and unsubtle point? I step back to the queue. The head of which is now held by a woman with a walker. She has to then awkwardly reverse with said walker so I can "stay behind the line". Its an unedifying position and the entire rest of the queue jostles backwards, including travel-agent-chat man who is loudly talking on his mobile phone to somebody who is in a travel agents. Its marginally worse than listening to "Radio HSBC Braindead".
I wait. Eons pass. Life savings man has now got to answer a question about his great-grandfather's dog's favourite walk. I wonder if he will actually pass away before getting his mitts on his savings. Or he will fail at the final hurdle because his DNA doesnt; match an alleged ancestor for the times of the Dark Ages.
I wait some more. A lot more.
Eventually life savings man has passed the Spanish inquisition and walks off with a cheap plastic shopping bag stuffed with notes. He wouldn't last 30 seconds in Streatham. Good job this isn't Streatham.
I step forward. "How can I help you" asks the other teller
I count to ten. I briefly and curtly request to pay the cheques in. She inquires about the automated pay-in machines; she catches my less than delighted visage. She quietens and processes the cheques and paying in slips. The paying in process takes less than a minute.
I have reached nirvana.
Now I am finally completed, outside the seasons have changed and my children are now adults. There's a new monarch on the throne and Brexit has still not completed. I notice a political poster in the wall of the new building that has somehow sprung up since I entered the bank. "Bojo's Dry Cleaning". The poster has a long, winding queue of people in it. I am sure I can see myself somewhere towards the back.
(c) Ian Diddams 2017
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